This year was just as bad. As subprime ate the housing market, “Enron” was still the news of the day. In the first six months, network broadcasts talked Enron more than twice as often as Fannie and Freddie combined.

How this happened is easy. Fannie and Freddie spent $170 million on lobbying since 1998, and $19.3 million in campaign contributions to well-known Democrats and Republicans since 1990, according to Politico.

Fannie itself was the Promised Land for Washington insiders – especially Clinton buddies like his head of the Office of Management and Budget Franklin Raines or his Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick. Those two now have been linked to Barack Obama’s candidacy along with former chairman and chief executive Jim Johnson, who was vetting vice presidential candidates when he had to resign after the Countrywide scandal.

Newsweek’s Charles Gasparino summed it up nicely in a Dec. 28, 2004, appearance on CNN calling Fannie too “politically correct” for coverage. “I mean, they do all the things that, let’s face it, liberal journalists like, like put home mortgages out there for poor people. And so right now, beating up on Fannie Mae is kind of politically incorrect.”

Wall Street Journal Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot put the blame firmly on the liberal establishment in a July 23, 2008 op-ed. “Fan and Fred also couldn't prosper for as long as they have without the support of the political left... This includes Mr. [Rep. Barney] Frank and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) on Capitol Hill, as well as Mr. [Paul] Krugman and the Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein in the press.”

It’s more than that. Enron fit the media theme that business is bad – especially if it has connections to Republicans. But when a far worse atrocity occurs and Democratic fingerprints are all over it, along with government, then that couldn’t be news.

Six years of spin and incompetence and we’re paying for it.